


The Elevator

by drugstoreperfume



Category: My Chemical Romance
Genre: Bullying, Closeted Character, Comfort, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Gay, Gay Bashing, Love/Hate, M/M, No Smut, One Shot, Slurs, Trapped In Elevator, Underage Drinking, Underage Kissing, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-02
Updated: 2018-02-03
Packaged: 2018-02-23 20:26:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,746
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2554484
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/drugstoreperfume/pseuds/drugstoreperfume
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Frank Iero stepped into an elevator with his much-hated bully, Gerard Way, he had hoped for a quick ride up to the next floor for class.  But no, the elevator had to get stuck then, and it just had to be with the worst person in history that he had to be trapped with.  An hour with the boy who'd rather see him in a coffin than alive, no signal on his phone, and quite a few elephants in the room - he wasn't looking forward to it one bit.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [bloodinfecticns](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=bloodinfecticns).



> you know who this is dedicated to: i love you more than words could ever say!  
> i am also very tired as this is the longest thing i have ever written in one go without wanting to blow my head off.

The elevator had started out awkward, as, for obvious reasons, Frank didn’t want to be near Gerard Way for any amount of time at all, but it started going downhill when the elevator doors wouldn’t open.

Rolling his eyes, Gerard snapped in his cocky voice, “This is your floor, isn’t it?”  He leant against the railings along the side of the tiny space, watching Frank in the mirror.

“Yes,” confirmed Frank, pushing the button to open the doors again.

“Then get out.”

Fire flooded through Frank’s body, but he counted to ten in his head before saying, “Can’t you see I’m trying?”

“What do you mean?”  Gerard stood upright.

“The doors won’t open,” muttered Frank.

“The fuck do you mean ‘the doors won’t open’?” Gerard strode over, shoved Frank to the side, hard, and began jabbing the button repeatedly.

Shaking the hair out of his eyes, Frank rubbed the sore parts of his body and scrambled to his feet.  “What are you doing, you moron?  You’re making it worse!”

“Shut the fuck up.”

“I think we’ve already established that that button doesn’t fucking work, asshat!”

“Holy shit, if you say another word I will fucking knock your teeth back into your windpipe, faggot!” yelled Gerard.

Shudders of pure anger raced around Frank’s nerves, heat and icy cold surging through his limbs at rapid-fire speed; but sensing defeat, Frank sank back into a corner of the elevator and got out his phone. No signal.  What the fuck was he going to do?

“Do any of the other buttons work?” he asked monotonously.

“No.  We’re stuck,” replied Gerard.

Frank couldn’t imagine a worse person to be stuck with, apart from maybe Adolf Hitler. “Well.  If we’re going to be stuck here together, we’ll at least try and be civil, shall we?”

“No, we could still try and call someone to get us out -”

Frank waved his phone in the air.  “No signal, see?”

Teeth gritted, Gerard fisted his hands into his hair before banging the side of his fist hard against the metal of the elevator wall. The metal vibrated and the sound rang ominously in the air around them.

“Don’t do that, what if the elevator drops?” Panic tightened Frank’s throat until he couldn’t breathe, until he was gasping.

“Maybe they’ll hear us outside.”

“Nobody will hear, everyone’s in class now. I think what they’d hear more is sound of our screams as the elevator plummets down the shaft.”

Childlike, Gerard covered his ears.  “I don’t need your imagination right now. Maybe you could hold back your descriptive writing until we live?”

Frank nodded, and once again they slipped into a silence. Class was eight minutes in, and Frank was missing a double lesson of Physics.  Not that he was happy that he was stuck in an elevator with the biggest douchebag to ever live, but on the bright side, he was missing his worst class.

Then, Gerard balled his hands up again and mumbled, “You probably did this so you could fuck me.”

“Excuse me?” Frank cried, appalled.

“You just want your wicked way with me, don’t you, cocksucker?” Gerard lurched towards him, pushing Frank further into a ball in the corner.  “You want to fuck me.”

“Nobody in the fucking school wants to fuck you, Way!”

Quick as a lightning strike, Gerard had the material of Frank’s hoodie in his fist and he was raising Frank up, not quite off the ground but onto his tiptoes to look him in the eye.  Hiding his fear, not showing weakness, Frank stared back into what he thought was the abyss of Gerard’s soul.  However, his eyes glowed with emotion, anger and shame and mortification and panic.  They were so human that Frank softened under his grip, endeavoring to unravel the layers of feeling trapped inside of him.  Before he could, Gerard released him and turned his back.

“I’m – I’m really wound up,” he whispered.

Frank snorted.  “No kidding.”

“I don’t want to punch you again.  Not really,” confessed Gerard.

“Really,” scoffed Frank, disbelieving. Gerard had left enough bruises on him throughout their high school life that he found it ludicrous that he wouldn’t want to hurt him.

Shrinking in on himself, a chastised little boy, Gerard nodded. “I can’t say that I haven’t wanted to hurt you, but that time when I really hurt you…”

Frank remembered that: he remembered Gerard throwing him against the lockers and slamming a fist into his face over and over, hitting his eyes, nose, mouth, jaw.  His nose was crooked and he needed surgery.  Both eyes were blackened.  One tooth had cracked and required replacing.  Every cell in his body ached.  There had been a moment, standing defenselessly before Gerard, totally under his control, watching tears flood down Gerard’s cheeks as he battered him, that Frank thought, _this little boy is going to kill me_.

But he didn’t.

“I thought you were going to murder me,” said Frank.

Eyes shut and shoulders taut, Gerard sniffed and wiped his nose with his sleeve.  “Me too. I don’t ever want to do that again.”

Somehow, Frank believed him.  Releasing his legs and letting them lay long (or short, really), Frank slouched down and blinked the seconds away.  Class was fifteen minutes in.

Pulling his phone out of his pocket again – no signal – Frank opened up a game and began to play.  Beside him, Gerard sat down and looked over his shoulder at the game.

“You have loads of power-ups,” he noted.

“I have too much free time, to be honest,” admitted Frank, swiping a thumb across the screen.

“I hardly ever have time to just sit and stare at walls. I’m always up doing something.”

Frank raised his eyebrows.  “Like hitting homosexuals?”

Gerard frowned and said, “Something like that.”

Weirdly, despite the fact that that was _exactly what Gerard did_ , Frank had a sick feeling that his comment had hit a nerve; what made the feeling even sicker, almost like rotting in his stomach, was the fact that he cared that he’d offended him. Just because Gerard was showing humanity for once, that didn’t mean that Frank was obligated to like him – he still had the scars from the surgeries he had to have because of that fucking prick.

In his moment of thought, his little character died.

“You should have jumped there.”

“Yes, okay, thank you for reminding me of that,” Frank snapped, starting a new game.

“Sorry, princess,” snorted Gerard.

Frank sighed and said, “Look, I’m wound up too. Do you want to play?”

“I have my own phone,” said Gerard.

Blushing, Frank stammered, “I know, uh, but mine has more power-ups.  Like you said.”

In return, Gerard blushed too, and they avoided each other’s gaze as he took the phone from Frank.  “Yeah, but don’t get cocky about it.”

“Sure, you can talk about not being cocky.” Frank yawned, and leant his head against the wall.

“Isn’t that hard on your head?” asked Gerard, fiddling with the phone.

Raising an eyebrow, Frank retorted, “We’re in an elevator. It’s unavoidable.”

“I know that, thank you,” hissed Gerard. “But – but you could lean on my shoulder if you like, if it’s more comfortable… if you want to sleep.”

Venom contorted Frank’s face as he began, “Why would I want to do-” But he stopped, as Gerard shut his eyes tight and flushed bright red, Adam’s apple bobbing in his throat.

“I’m trying to be nicer.”  Gerard ducked his head.  “To you, at least.”

Mouth shutting, Frank nodded and scooted over to Gerard, resting his head on his shoulder.  Sports had given Gerard a layer of muscle that was softer on Frank’s skull than he had anticipated.  Sleeping would be tricky, as Frank was still anxious about his position beside a boy he was certain would rather see him dead than alive, but Gerard’s warmth radiated onto him and wrapped him in blissful heat.  Even when Gerard’s arm wrapped around him and held him close, he didn’t flinch. He felt so small.

Maybe this was weakness.  Maybe Gerard was trying to find areas to poke holes to hurt him even more.  Maybe he was being made a fool of again.  Again and again and again, he was always the idiot of the situation, always blind.

He kissed Gerard once.  They were both thirteen, little Frankie was drunk (wrong crowd) and little Gerard was at the park, on the swings, sketching.  Little Frankie had staggered over to him, straddled his lap and made out with him, all preteen fumbling and trying to fit the puzzle pieces of sexuality together; and little Gerard kissed back, dark hair under little Frankie’s bony hands, probably tasting the alcohol on little Frankie’s mouth but they were just boys and they fit like spoons.

It all went downhill from there.

Little Gerard’s friends rushed into the park, kicking a football between them, and saw little Frankie and little Gerard kissing on the swings.  As soon as they’d made a comment, yelled ‘Gerard, what the fuck are you doing?’ little Gerard had shoved little Frankie from his body and yelled back, “Get the fuck off me, freak!”

“Gerard,” little Frankie had cried, but little Gerard sank his fist into little Frankie’s gut and spat on his face, and they hadn’t spoken since high school, and you know what happened there.

“You kissed me back,” Frank muttered sleepily.

“Huh?”

“On the swings, when we were little.  You kissed me back.”

Gerard quickly drew back from Frank, making his head loll and his world spin for a second.  “You’re a liar.”

Shuffling away from Gerard, Frank yelled, “I’m not a fucking liar, you kissed me!”

“I never fucking kissed you, fag!”

Frank leapt to his feet and shouted back at this _prick_ who thought he could hide forever, “On the fucking swings at the park, you had your tongue in my fucking mouth!  If that isn’t kissing, I don’t know what the fuck it is.”

Hands shaking, face red, Gerard screamed, “No I didn’t, Frank Iero.”

Frank laughed coldly.  “Ooh, full names now?  Sorry, Mom!”

“I never kissed you.”

“I was drunk off my head and I still remember that, so I know you can.  I know you can remember the first time you knocked me to the ground and made me feel like _nothing_ ,” spat Frank.

“Exactly!” roared Gerard, tears in his eyes. “Exactly!  You were drunk!”

“What, you think just because I was wasted I could make up something like that?  It was cheap beer, Gerard, not LSD!”

“You were fucking drunk!  You weren’t supposed to remember!”

Frozen solid, Frank tried to come round to what he said. “So… you admit you kissed me?”

One lonely tear fell from Gerard’s eyes. “But I thought you’d forget come morning.  In the hangover haze – or whatever the fuck you get.  I never thought that it’d stick with me.  I just wanted to… You kissed me first!”

“You punched me in the gut!”

“You threw up on my fucking trainers!”

“I went to _hospital_!”

It appeared that this was new information, as Gerard gasped and slumped back to the ground, crying hard into his hands. Oh, Frank wanted to cry too, he wanted to scream his heart away and never feel again, but he was relishing the sensation of being the solid one, the one in control.

“I only ever hurt you – to hurt me,” confessed Gerard.

“What?”

“You were everything I hated about myself! Y-you were so proud to be what I despised most about being me – what I still despise – about myself…”

“Don’t fuck with me, you love yourself. You love yourself more than anyone else could ever love you,” hissed Frank, pounding a fist against the elevator wall.

“God, no, I hate myself.  I hate everything about m-me.  What you’re saying is still true, but no matter what good f-features I have, no matter who I grow to b-be, I will always hate myself for the f-filthy little p-part of me I hurt you to hide!” wept Gerard.

Frank’s gut twisted.  Kneeling down beside him, Frank said, “Then confess to me now. What you say will never leave this elevator.”

Despite his condition, Frank could swear he heard a chuckle from Gerard, masked by crying, before he let the bomb drop.

“I’m gay.”

“Bull. Shit.”

“Please!” Gerard grabbed Frank’s hand, pulling him back towards him.  “Please, just – just don’t say anything, just take it.  I hate it, I hate it.  I will never ever be a good person again.”

“Being gay doesn’t make you inherently bad.”

“But you’re good already, Frank!  You’re good!  And I love you!”

Tears were flowing freely down Frank’s face now, and he pulled back in shock.  “It’s love that makes you hurt me, then?  Because if you hurt the people you love, you’ll never get anywhere.  It would be abusive, and…”

“That’s why I stopped hurting you.”

“You think the words don’t fucking hurt?” cried Frank, shaking a little.  “You think the word ‘faggot’ doesn’t skin me to the fucking bone?”

“Then how do you think it hurts me, Frank?”

And Frank stopped, because he was right. Even saying it hypothetically, the sour taste of the word in his mouth was enough to repulse him completely, whereas Gerard lived and breathed the word.

“What kind of security does hurting me give you, asshole?”

Wiping a tear from his face, Gerard admitted, “I’d rather you hated me than were indifferent towards me.”

Laughing harshly, Frank scoffed, “Indifferent towards you? Gerard, I fucking loved you. I still – I still do.” He buried his head in his hands. “Every hit, every word, it all made me hate you to my core, but I could never… I could never forget the fireworks I felt when I kissed you on those swings.  When you kissed me back.  When the stars glowed like diamonds above us and you could taste the beer on my mouth and you didn’t care, you just held be and it was so clumsy and I loved every second, and…”

“I loved you then.  I love you now.”

“You were ashamed of me.  Of us,” Frank whispered.

Gerard hid his face again. “I’m trying not to be, I promise.”

“Well, when you’ve stopped being the biggest asshole on Earth, you can give me a call,” said Frank, taking Gerard’s phone out of his pocket.

“What are you doing?”

“Putting my number into your phone.”

Quivering with fear, Gerard objected, “If my friends see -”

Angrily, Frank deleted his name and reentered it. “Fine, you fucking bastard, my name is Marco in your phone, does that make you fucking feel better?”

Mortified, Gerard looked away.  “I’m sorry.”

Something inside Frank gave in at that, and brought him back to the days of little Frankie and little Gerard, and he slouched back again, eyes closed, mentally, emotionally and physically exhausted. “It’ll take time, I know that.”

“I’ll try and leave that group, they don’t give a shit about me.”

“You’ll succeed, Gerard.  I know you will.”  Frank’s eyes softened as they looked at one another.

Slowly, gently, Gerard leaned in, but Frank stopped him.

“Is this a trick?  Are you trying to hurt me?” he whispered, agonized.

Gerard caressed his hand down Frank’s cheek and vowed, “I would never do that, and over time, I swear I will earn back your trust. I swear I will show you nothing but affection, and be a better person.”

Smirking, Frank brushed his hair back and said, “One step at a time.”

Then, their lips met.

It was like they were kids again, but so much better. Gerard was taller, stronger, pulling Frank towards him, kissing so softly and gently it was like butterfly wings brushing his lips.  While his grip held such power, he moved with affection, and Frank melted, deepening the kiss, holding Gerard to him.  The years of craving, of pain, of anger, of depression, all melted away into the kiss. They were at common ground, they had found no-man’s-land and the bullets had stopped.  Heat blossomed between them and Gerard’s breath was both minty and hot, mixed together, the lustful cold.  When his hands began to roam, Frank parted them, choosing to bury his face into the crook of Gerard’s neck instead.

“No further?” asked Gerard.

“No further,” he replied.  “Besides, we’re in a fucking elevator.”

He looked at his phone – class was fifty five minutes in, and soon they’d be out of here, hopefully.  However, Frank had decided that this experience hadn’t been all bad, not at all, and as Frank looked at the boy who once instilled fear into his heart with just a hint of compassion (okay, a lot of compassion, as he was a hopeless romantic deep down inside) he knew there could definitely be many worse people he could be stuck in an elevator in.

“Are we dating now?” enquired Gerard, blushing.

Frank could see him fighting the shame inside, struggling to be contented about it, but it wasn’t enough, not yet. “No.  We’ll call ourselves a thing when you’ve got a little better.”

Gerard nodded, looking slightly relieved. “Okay.  Thank you, Marco.”

Snorting, Frank elbowed him in the ribs.

“Seriously, Frank, thank you.”  Smiling softly, Gerard stroked his hair.

“Thank you, Gee.  No more hurting?”

“Never.”

For a while, Gerard held him, enveloping him in heat and kindness, and the promise of a potential love: and when the elevator doors rattled, they calmly parted from one another, and Gerard gave him one last smile before the doors opened.

 


	2. the second part

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> the aftermath of the elevator

Frank felt… optimistic.

For once, Frank felt warm and happy in the school cafeteria. It wasn’t the fact that Ray had slipped him another traybake - Frank was a fussy eater who couldn’t be bothered to kick off about it, so his friends took it upon themselves to feed him - or the fact that he’d finally managed to draw a tree that looked something like a tree in his Art class. No, the secret to his warmth and happiness was in his hand: his phone.

Frank turned to look at the Table. With a capital T. _The Table_. Sitting around the table, trays askew and crumbs in abundance, were six boys. The three closest to the edge of the table, on the left, were picking on a freshman as he walked past, fiddling with the badges on his backpack. The two in the middle were leant, foreheads nearly together, colluding over cartons of milk. The last boy - black hair curling around his jaw, hazel eyes, pointed face - was looking at his phone and smiling.

Clutching his phone tighter, Frank did all he could to bite back a smile. He pressed his ankles together under the chair and tried to make it seem like his heart wasn’t about to grow wings and leap from his chest.

It had been a month since the elevator, and Frank felt optimistic.

There had been no real words between them… but maybe that was a good thing. Not once had Gerard stopped Frank to tell him he was a ‘faggot’, or that he was ‘disgusting’. Not once had Frank had to hear his voice, usually so melodic, sneer at him as he passed. For now, Frank enjoyed the silence. When Gerard wasn’t speaking, Frank could take time for his eyes to subtly wander Gerard’s face, exploring the planes of his cheekbone and jaw, his blemishes, tracing the bow of his lips. Even the silence felt awfully indulgent to Frank. Besides, they communicated by text anyway.

Frank’s phone buzzed in his hand. Curling around it, Frank swiped open the message. It was a picture of the three angry boys grabbing the backpack straps of the freshmen, with ‘moron’ written messily in iMessage pen.

Frank smiled, and then grimaced as he tapped back a message, hands concealed by his drawn up knees in the bench seat. “Are you going to do anything about it?” he typed back.

Across the room, Gerard, at the Table, looked down at his message from ‘Marco’. Frank’s phone buzzed again.

“No.”

That was okay, Frank thought. He flicked a small crumb of his second traybake to the edge of his tray. For now, at least, that was okay.

When he looked up from his phone (and his tray), Mikey was staring at him with an odd expression. “Who are you texting?” asked Mikey.

“Just a friend,” explained Frank, now hurrying to fill his mouth with food.

Mikey’s brow furrowed. “You don’t have any friends except us.”

“Rude,” mumbled Ray, grinning.

Mikey doesn’t return the smile as he says, “But it’s true.”

Frank, who had tactically filled his mouth with very dry food, could not respond. Mikey, knowing a diversion when he saw one, dropped the issue.

Or so Frank thought. He was caught just outside of the boy’s bathroom by Mikey’s hand on his shoulder. Shocked, he allowed himself to be backed into the wall.

“What’s going on?” asked Mikey?

Frank looked up at Mikey, who had lost some of his geeky softness with his height advantage. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Frank said, and it sounded like bullshit even to his ears.

Mikey knew it too. Of course he did.

Frank wondered if his face would harden, if he would lose his nerdiness altogether through the shadows on his face, but Mikey’s eyes soften. “What’s happening, Frank?” he asked. “Why aren’t you talking to me?”

Frank said nothing, not trusting himself to reply.

“We always talk to one another. Through everything.” Mikey’s hand loosens on Frank’s shoulder and comes to rest on the side of his neck. “Tell me what’s going on, Frankie.”

And - and - and Frankie told him everything. With a sagging sigh, every word, from the event and the month after, the conversations, the feelings, the mystery, the hope - it all came rushing out of him like a balloon deflating, one elasticated line of noise until he was wrinkled and small and empty, but somehow lighter. Mikey listened to it all, his thumb rubbing circles on the join between Frank’s neck and shoulder.

When Frank was done, Mikey didn’t look shocked or upset. Frank liked that about Mikey. It took a lot to rustle him.

“So you want to be with him?” said Mikey.

Frank paused, and then nodded.

Mikey sighed. “You want to be with the boy who used to hit you?”

“He said it could be different,” Frank protested. He knew the conversation would go this way - that’s why he had avoided it, but he should have known that Mikey is a man on a mission when it comes to secrets.

“Oh yeah? Different how?” asked Mikey, eyebrow raised. “Different as in he will see your face knowing that he’s never thrown a punch into it? Or a kick? Never sent you to hospital? Because that will never change.”

Bile rose in Mikey’s throat - his breath caught, and then released.

“I know it seems like - like there’s nobody out there at the minute,” started Mikey, “and maybe it’s true. Maybe there is nobody out there, nobody gay at least, while we’re so young, but you don’t have to fall for - fall for the first guy who -” Mikey squeezed his eyes shut. “He put you in the hospital, Frankie.”

“I know he did,” Frank said. “I’m - working on forgetting.”

Mikey seemed to resist the urge to shake him. “You can’t forget it, Frank! You can’t forget something like that, especially not when you’re around him, not because it’s impossible but because it’s important! He’s dangerous for you.”

Frank once again said nothing.

“You were a mess for weeks.”

It was Frank’s turn to squeeze his eyes shut. “Don’t remind me.”

“It seems like you need reminding!”

“He said he’s always loved me,” Frank said, now quieter.

Mikey scoffed. “And that’s love? The hospital? What’s different now?”

Frank said nothing.

“What’s changed in the way he loves you? Is his love still a kick in the teeth? A decade of trauma?”

“He said he’d change, Mikey,” Frank protested.

“How can someone like that change?” Mikey looked down at him with an expression of incredulous shock, like he couldn’t believe that Frank could be so stupid, and it made Frank feel very small and very foolish, like a child being reprimanded.

“I don’t know, but doesn’t he deserve the chance?”

“Should that chance be with you?”

Frank looked up at Mikey, jaw clenched. “What if I want it to be with me? Can’t I have this? Not as some charity case for him, but - for me?”

“It’s such a stupid idea -”

“But it’s mine!” Frank’s eyes began to water, and he blinked until the burning was gone and he could see the lights around Mikey’s head, blindingly bright. “It’s my idea, and you’re meant to support me, not be my parent.”

Mikey’s thumb resumed its comforting circles. “I don’t want you hurt.”

“I know,” whispered Frank.

There, near the entrance to the boys’ bathroom, Frank knew how they looked. Mikey curled over Frank, hand on his neck. Frank looking up, eyes glistening, hidden in the shadows cast by the lockers to their left. He knew how they looked.

He’d let his guard down.

“Now, look who we have here?” came a low voice.

Frank’s head snapped round to see - him, boy number two from the Table; Felix. With a square grin, Felix dropped the bag strap of the poor freshman he dragged with him, who gathered what things he could and left in a scramble and a flurry of paper. Felix had let the small fry go now that he had gotten the big fish to take the bait.

“Fuck off, Felix,” growled Mikey.

Felix laughed without feeling. “Or what, faggot? You gonna make me regret staying?”

Boy one - James - came to his side and raised an eyebrow. “You don’t wanna get too close though. These homos are contagious.”

Felix raised both eyebrows in response, before turning back. “He has a point. We don’t want anyone else getting your disgusting disease.”

Mikey rolled his eyes before turning to Frank. “Come on, we’re going.”

Frank’s eyes widened. He whispered back, frantically, “No - if we leave, they’ll chase us to where they can’t be seen, and -”

Mikey leaned in closer, ignoring Felix and James’s jeers. “They won’t touch you with me here. They don’t know I can’t fight yet.”

Frank, frozen with fear, stayed standing there for a few more moments before he began to thaw. Turning around to look back at the taunting James and Felix, Frank noticed -

Gerard.

He froze again, dropping Mikey’s sleeve. Standing behind Boys One and Two, Gerard twiddled his thumbs. The set of his jaw said bravado, but his eyes said fear. The corners of his mouth said guilt.

With his own eyes, Frank began to plead. Do something, he willed. Tell them off.

He turned to Mikey and saw something glimmering in his eyes too. This is his chance, Mikey’s eyes seemed to say. This is his chance.

Frank knew it, too. He turned back towards Gerard.

 _Move_ , he willed. _Tell them off. Break it off with them. Choose me for the first time. Choose me. Choose -_

Gerard’s Adams Apple bobbed in his throat as he swallowed. His eyes flicked towards the Boys, and then back to Frank. He didn’t move. He didn’t speak. He watched. And then he didn’t, his eyes finding the lockers beside of him and following their grey lines up to the cracked roofing. Anywhere but the Boys. Anywhere but here. Anywhere but Frank.

Frank turned back to Mikey - he thought Mikey would look self-entitled or proud, but he just looked sad; pitiful, which hurt more. With a sigh than caught on something deep and aching in his chest, Frank turned away from the Boys - and Gerard - and walked out of the school with Mikey.

‘Delete this number from your phone,’ Frank texted to Gerard later.

‘I can change,’ Frank received forty-five minutes later.

There are many things Frank wanted to say. He wanted to tell him about how it felt to kiss him the first time, the taste of beer and boy and it was so beautiful that he - he wanted to tell him how blood tastes in your mouth the second before you start to choke on it - he wanted to tell him about the tree he drew in art, the traybake, Mikey, Ray - he wanted to hand him the whole world - he wanted to agree with him.

‘No, you can’t,’ Frank replied.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i wrote the elevator when i was very young. reading it back now, there's no way that a relationship like that could ever be healthy. for the sequel, instead of writing the two 'unlikely lovers' rekindling their bond, i wanted to write something that represents what i feel frank deserves after the pain he's felt, the emotional manipulation, the bullying - this is that sequel. no loving, no romance, no continuation of 'frerard', just an ending i feel frank deserves.


End file.
